


The Silence Is Your Answer

by spectreshepard



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Destroy Ending, Gen, Post-Canon, normandy crew - Freeform, this broke me into tiny little pieces okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-30 10:55:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8530315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spectreshepard/pseuds/spectreshepard
Summary: Honor doesn't matter to ghosts. Javik was right.That doesn't make letting go any easier.





	

 

 

His hands feel nothing. That is the first thing Shepard notices, running his fingers along the Normandy’s CIC mainframe. Somewhere, a music box is playing, over and over; the same sickly sweet notes of a melody for dreamers, and he isn’t one. He tries to listen for his own footsteps instead, heavy against the melodic hum, but there is only the song. It won’t stop playing.

Shepard doesn’t know what he’s waiting for; only that he’s _waiting_ . The Normandy is quiet, but he still sees the Alliance blues on the ship, tinkering and hovering over holos of the internal processes. Nothing is wrong, nothing is out of place, but nothing is… _living_. He doesn’t see a single movement that belongs to organic minds, not a sound, not a breath. Just the same insistent song. Shepard frowns, stepping away from the galaxy map which disperses with a gentle hum.

A faint feeling of grit on his fingers catches Shepard’s attention, and he brings his hand up to study it in the blue light. Rust. He rubs his fingers gently, watching as the red crumbles further and onto the metal grille below him. The music keeps playing intently, the volume unwavering even as Shepard stalks through the Normandy like an unwelcome ghost.

A glance down the bridge brings nothing of Joker’s crude humour to his ears, nor the smooth quips of EDI’s protocol assessments. There was nothing of Garrus’ dry remarks over the comm system. Not even Tali’s soft whir of engine-room technicalities. The shuttle bay had gone dark, and Shepard can’t even recall the smell of heatsinks and clean armour.

It’s cold as he approaches the elevator, waits for the doors to slide open, and steps in. Only one deck is green-lit; deck 3, the crew quarters. Shepard hits the holo interface which responds with static.The broken electronic hum overhead preludes the elevator’s descent, and the cold grows ever closer, brushing his skin in a mockery of comfort. It wraps around his wrists and travels up to his shoulders where it hangs like the only thread tying Shepard to this existence. He is unwilling to test its strength.

Stepping out of the elevator, the music seems to rise, swelling with the cold now clutching at him like shackles that he cannot shake off. He pushes through, a thin-worn smile stretching into a grimace that pulls and tears the pieces of his face, held together with metal and screws. He catches sight of himself in the reflection of the Alliance insignia emblazoned on the memorial wall. The sight doesn’t shock him anymore, the way the red cuts through him so easily. He knew he’d be paying a price for all of this; scars seems the least of them. It’s the names on the board that sting Shepard more than anything. _Kaidan missed one hell of a fight_ , he thinks for a moment. It’s painfully easy for him to turn his eye and forget.

It’s no big deal. Forgetting things, that is. Shepard knows you can’t carry everything if you want to survive, and to survive, he forgot how to feel human the moment he stepped on Earth. How else do you see so much death, and carry on walking through it?

A few more steps and his palms hit the solid metal of the starboard port door. But he doesn’t feel the cold of the metal itself, only of the air around him. The door slides open, frictionless against his calloused hands, and he steps inside. He breathes in, and he feels his chest tighten against the icy air that suddenly stings, pricking at bare skin and coming out in startled gasps.

The music stops, scratches, spits a tune of discord that tears right through Shepard, and the door slides close at his back.

This was Ashley’s room. Shepard stares blankly at the floor. This _is_ Ashley’s room. She sits and watches the stars go by, and she sits and talks about her sisters, and she sits with Shepard and they don’t need to say anything at all.

This is Ashley’s room, but Shepard sees no trace of her. No jacket strewn across the benches, no books dog-eared and upside down on the floor. No empty bottles, no sweet smell of her perfume, no brilliant smile to greet him when he walks closer. Nothing.

Shepard feels humanity clutching at his clockwork heart, pulling, prodding, trying to find its way back in. It’s the only warm thing amidst this chill, but he’s forgotten how to crack it open again. Grimacing, he swallows the question on his chapped lips, teeth grinding together as he finds a careful line to walk, straight to the starboard view. A heavy hand hits the glass as the music shudders to a halt. He watches an outline ghost his fingers, white and wispy and gone in a moment he can pretend never happened.

It doesn’t occur to Shepard, in such a moment, the capacity for sheer progress outside that window. Every star an anchor for a life, or many, or simply nothing at all, alive of its own merit and in spite of the blackness around it.

It doesn’t occur to Shepard, because he is the only person in this room.

It doesn’t occur to Shepard, because he is the only person on this dead, abandoned ship.

It doesn’t occur to Shepard, because denial is a persistent friend in dire straits, and Shepard has never liked being lonely. Not like all of those little pinpricks of light out there in the black, cold and distant and shattered, just the way he’d left Earth.

The hand on the window curls into a fist. If he presses hard enough, he can feel the cracks. Bone-white knuckles, eroded and scarred by years of attrition with a gun in his grip.There was no number for the lives he’d taken with those hands, no peace to be found in the words spun round his broken fingers, molded into a marksman’s grasp. Death was his deliverance, and Shepard knows the hand that takes will find it ever harder to be the hand that gives.

The galaxy would go on living without him. He’d made sure of it. He took everything, so that when it mattered; he could give every last part of him, and still feel complete.

“Kill me once, shame on you.” Shepard’s grim chuckle fills the room with bitter notes, a scratched, discordant replacement for the lofty melody of the musicbox. His smile is lethal, a curve in the shadow cast across the room.

“Kill me twice? Ah. Lesson learned. This is Commander Shepard, signing off.”

He steps back, the ghost on the window disappearing from view as Shepard throws a mock salute to his own reflection, before the lights go out.

 

* * *

 

 

> <<CODEX ENTRY: ALLIANCE FRIGATE NORMANDY SR2>>  
> 
> 
> The Normandy SR2 has become a permanent fixture on the Citadel’s docks, decommissioned and long since gone dark. Her repairs after London were minimal, with resources focused on the severe relay damage and the Citadel. As a result, Normandy still bears her battle-scars proudly. Hull dents and scorched panels mark each hit as Commander Shepard and his team made the final push to fire the Crucible.  
> 
>  Normandy was the spearhead of a recovery program in the aftermath of the Crucible blast, transporting engineers to mass relay repair stations. With extensive data collaborations from a restored EDI and the engineers, many of whom worked on the Crucible itself, primary relays were finally restored to functionality in the beginning of 2187.
> 
>  An heated debate on the Normandy’s future utilisation became interstellar news shortly after, with many advocating for her retirement and just as many pushing for a return to it’s rightful place as the tip of pioneering ship design, working alongside the Council fleets as well as the Systems Alliance. The controversial decision was made by the Council and particularly the Systems Alliance to retire the Normandy, after her service to the galaxy as a whole.
> 
>  Adm. Steven Hackett, when asked about the decision, commented:
> 
>  “Human captains have a history of going down with their flagship. Admittedly, practicality shot that particular streak of humanity in the foot when deep-space exploration became the norm, but… the Normandy belonged to Shepard. Normandy’s crew would- actually, no, her crew DID follow Shepard to the end of the goddamn world, and not once did they doubt it. The loss, for them, has been far more profound than many of us could even assume. I don’t think anybody who knew Shepard…hell. It still doesn’t seem real.”
> 
>  “Shepard and the Normandy both deserve their rest. They sure as hell earned it.”
> 
>  Some docking reports from late-shift workers have stated they felt ‘an eerie presence’ as though ‘we were being watched.’ Numerous sightings have been claimed, from flickering hull lights to phantom emissions. Some reports stretched as far as saying conversations could be heard if you were able to get close enough, “comm static and laughter” as well as mentions of names, all of which were Normandy’s crew at some time during her service. Many disregard these reports as absolute fiction; but there is a clear message written by Normandy’s posting as a memorial to the many, for those who wish to find it.

 

_Death closes all, but something 'ere the end, some work of noble note, may yet be done, not unbecoming men that strove with Gods_


End file.
